News and information from Michael Coleman, product manager for Adobe After Effects.

Paint shortcuts we might have forgotten to tell you about

Getting into the flow while painting or rotoscoping is all about the ergonomics of moving quickly. We have a bunch of single key shortcuts to make this easier, but it seems that we forgot to mention a couple shortcuts in the usual place. These are available while you have a paint tool selected:

1 — Step forward by the number of frames indicated in the Paint panel

2 — Step backward by the number of frames indicated in the Paint panel

3 — Choose clone preset #1

4 — Choose clone preset #2

5 — Choose clone preset #3

6 — Choose clone preset #4

7 — Choose clone preset #5

Of these, I think the 1 & 2 keys are particularly useful for right-handers because you don’t have to reach across the keyboard to the Page Up/Page Down keys. And since they move the current time indicator by the amount indicated in the paint panel, you can easily paint "on twos", or whatever increment you need.